IIPC Debate 14 Nov

IIPC Debate #92
Tue Nov 14, 4-6 pm (Seminar room E325, Minerva building, University of Turku)
Dr Katherine Farrimond (University of Sussex): The Femme Fatale in Consumer Culture: Buying Glamour, Nostalgia and Feminism

‘Femme fatale’, a term most often associated with classical film noir, can also be found in consumer contexts from fashion magazine editorials and beauty products to sex toys and weapons. Despite this elasticity, there are points of gravity and attraction around which the term hovers in consumer culture: aspiration, agency, glamour, danger. In this paper, I examine instances of ‘femme fatale’ in consumer culture as indicative of the elasticity of retro culture, the uses to which certain nostalgic figurations can be put, and the relationship between (post)feminism and the past.

Biography
Katherine Farrimond is Lecturer in Media and Cultural Studies at the University of Sussex. Her monograph, The Contemporary Femme Fatale was published with Routledge in 2017, and she has published numerous articles and book chapters on representations of girlhood, femininity, sexuality and the uses of the past in popular culture. She is book reviews editor for Feminist Theory Journal and co-editor of SEQUENCE.

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IIPC Debate 16 Nov

IIPC Debate #93
Thu Nov 16, 16-18, Seminar room E123 (Minerva Building, Kaivokatu 12, Turku)

Grab them by the pussy: Fifty Shades Darker and the dominant white man in the age of Trump

Dr Anna-Elena Pääkkölä (University of Turku)

 

This debate raises issues surrounding two separate yet interrelated phenomena in popular culture today: Trump and emergent sexism, and the film Fifty Shades Darker (2017). While Fifty Shades has been considered a fairly harmless, soft-core sexual fantasy franchise similar to the Harlequin novels, its raging popularity during the 2010s raises questions as to why it became so popular so quickly. In 2016, secret recordings reveal then-candidate Trump referring to women in derogatory, sexist ways. At more or less at the same time, the trailer for Fifty Shades Darker shows a powerful white heterosexual man stalking a woman, audiovisually framed as a psychological thriller instead of a “rom-com” or a soft porn film. My presentation discusses the Fifty Shades franchise as a symptom of rising sexist attitudes in the sphere of popular culture, and what this tells us of the “crisis of masculinity” in present days circumstances.

 

Anna-Elena Pääkkölä is a university teacher and researcher in musicology at the University of Turku, who discussed the sounds of sadomasochistic erotica and in her PhD (Sound Kinks: Sadomasochistic Erotica in Audiovisual Music Performances, University of Turku, 2016). Her main research interests lie in popular music and culture, gender and queer studies, and audiovisual studies.

IIPC Debate 26 Oct

IIPC Debate #91
Thu Oct 26, 16-18, Seminar room Litzen, E117 (Minerva Building, Kaivokatu 12, Turku)

IIPC Visiting Professor Scott Henderson (Brock University, Canada): There’s No ‘E’ in Fuck: Language and Alliances in Saint-Etienne’s Music Scene

Scott Henderson is an Associate Professor and former Chair of the Department of Communication, Popular Culture and Film at Brock University. He is also the Executive Director and co-founder of the Popular Culture Association of Canada. His research focuses on issues of identity and representation in popular culture and he is currently investigating the changing nature of music scenes within post-industrial cities, including St. Etienne, France, Hamilton, Ontario, and Glasgow, Scotland. He is also co-editing, with Barry Keith Grant, a forthcoming collection on comics to film adaptation. He has published work on Canadian film and television, youth culture, film and popular music, British cinema, and Canadian radio policy.